How the “House of Cards” Title Sequence Was Filmed

David Fincher always makes an effort to include creative title sequences in his projects. For “House of Cards” the director picked Andrew Geraci, owner of District 7 Media, to shoot a complex time-lapse sequence of Washington DC. In an interview with Momentum Blog, Geraci talked about working with Fincher:

We talked for awhile about time-lapse photography and how it could impact the show. He asked me if I would be up for creating a variety of scenes for the intro, all showing DC in a dirty, gritty, grungy way. I told him that shouldn’t be too hard. He was very open to the idea of letting me choose, pick, and compose nearly 99% of the shots, which left a lot of room for creativity.

Geraci also revealed how long it took to capture the time-lapse footage:

We started shooting in March and wrapped up the final shot in August of 2012. It was nearly 6 months of producing more than 6TB worth of imagery.

To shoot the sequence, Geraci relied on Canon 5Ds:

We shoot with the Canon 5D Mark II and Mark III. Lenses included, Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 II, Canon 24mm f/2.8, Canon 100-400mm F/4, Canon 70-200mm F/2.8 II. We used Manfrotto 550XProB tripods and a variety of LEE 100mm filters… We chose the Dynamic Perception Stage Zero to shoot all of our motion scenes. One of the main reasons we chose to use them is because of their mobility. Compared to other systems the setup time and space imprint is relatively small. Other systems out there require larger setups and more space, something DC doesn’t have.

Check out the full interview over at Momentum, to see a video of the opening sequence.